SKY News journalists could do with a little wake-up call after uncritically reporting claims by a University of NSW associate professor that Australia has a problem called “urban overheating”.

It’s no news that big cities can be hellish places in the midst of a hot Australian summer, even with air conditioning in most of our vehicles and buildings. How Aussies managed in days gone by when most cars didn’t have aircon and electric fans were the cooling technology of the day should remind us how soft we have become – if anything.

But “research” presented by UNSW associate prof. Lan Ding, has hyped up this seasonal issue into a supposed looming crisis. She has made the earth-shattering observation that “urban overheating” is a threat to the elderly, young people, low-income households and people with pre-existing health conditions.

Heat also increases energy and water consumption, she tells us, as if that’s unusual or some sort of problem.

This information is conveyed to us by the Sky News anchor as if it is undisputed fact. She states that “2023 marks our hottest year on record – our summers are getting hotter and more dangerous”. No insertion of any qualifying words like “it is believed” or “climate scientists claim” from this journalist.

Cairns News would suggest that those among us unfortunate enough to be unable to afford airconditioning, save up for a $25 K-mart fan, and use it in conjunction with water in a spray bottle. It works quite well in the worst heat.

Meanwhile, our intrepid UNSW researcher informs use that heat waves in Europe in 2022 caused “61 sudden deaths”. Really? Significant medical opinion might also relate many of those sudden deaths to mRNA injections.

Further, she tells us it’s estimated that by 2050 increasing urban overheating will cause a $7.1 trillion loss in productivity “because it will be too hot to work”. Strangely, she says this with a broad smile. More research funding coming her way perhaps?

We should mention that Assoc. Prof Ding is not a climate scientist, but she is up to her eyeballs in everything else “sustainable” in her Faculty of Built Environment after receiving her PhD from the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning.

Before her UNSW studies Lan Ding was Senior Research Scientist at that prime purveyor of climate hysteria, the CSIRO, from 2000 to 2011. She was also senior lecturer at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre at the University of Wollongong.

Lan Ding is also a member of the Standards Australia Committee, IT-268 Sustainable Cities and Communities, and “UNSW Node Leader” at the “Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living”. We might say the associate professor has done very well out of the “environmental research” business.

And given her latest warnings of a suppposed approaching summer heat apocalypse, we can be sure Lan Ding will have many more lucrative “research projects” coming her way.

Climate clownery was also evident in Tasmania earllier this year when oceanographer James Wyatt from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership told the ABC that “we” are “approaching some tipping points’ and he was “not sure whether it can be reversed or not”.

The crisis in Wyatt’s mind led him to do what climate scientists have been doing for the last few decades – beg for another research grant. “So more funding into those areas is pretty crucial to understand how it’s going to affect our planet,” he said.

Dr Edward Doddridge, a climate scientist from the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Scientists, praised the early career researchers for bringing “urgency and energy to an issue of global importance”.

“We throw around the word unprecedented quite a lot in climate science, but it really is true,” Dr Doddridge assured the ABC. “We have seen shifts in the sea ice that were beyond our wildest imaginations. We have seen heat waves that were 40 degrees warmer than expected weather.”

He and his merry band of Antarctic travellers have even seen “entire colonies of Emperor penguins lose all of their young in a breeding season“. And the hysteria rolls on as naive journalists uncritically swallow this grand deception.